CONVERSATION

Out to Lunch with Buddy Valastro

America’s favorite baker, Buddy “Cake Boss” Valastro, arrived for lunch in New Jersey bearing gifts: a box of cupcakes and an even bigger box of assorted cakes from his now famous local store, Carlo’s Bakery. “Enjoy!” he said, sliding into a booth at Zylo, in Hoboken.

At 36, this likable Italian-American was still in his pristine chef’s uniform, looking like a prince of the city, as strangers waved hello to him as if he were one of the family. The global success of his reality-TV show Cake Bosstelevised in more than 160 countries has spawned an expanding empire of Carlo’s Bakerys, spin-off reality shows (Kitchen Boss, Next Great Baker, and Bakery Boss), a forthcoming Las Vegas restaurant, a product line, and cookbooks. (Family Celebrations with the Cake Boss has just been published by Atria.) But Mr. Valastro’s original reality show, filmed at his vast cake factory in New Jersey, has little in common with that questionable trio Jerseylicious, Jersey Shore, and The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

“We’re all about family and cake,” he explained as a waiter said to him, “Welcome, sir. How are you?”—and recommended the calamari.

“You know what?” he responded. “I’m going to go with the prosciutto panini and fries.” He looked slightly guilty. “What can you do? You got to live a little bit; right? Can’t beat French fries.”

“Can’t beat the sugar highs of cupcakes, either,” I said.

“They’re part of life, but my thing is to eat them in moderation. Same with fries. That’s what I preach. Eat a cupcake, not 15, you know? If you’re going to say to yourself, ‘I’m never going to eat another cupcake in my life because it’s fattening, is that a way to live? You see what I’m saying? You ain’t got to eat them every day.”

“Cakes are always tempting, though.”

“They definitely are. And usually a celebration is a time to indulge. Like, it’s your birthday, John. What are you going to say? Once a year you shouldn’t have birthday cake?”

Buddy Valastro, raised in Hoboken, is a fourth-generation baker. His Sicilian father, Buddy senior, was penniless (and shoeless) when he immigrated to America, but, after years of backbreaking toil, he eventually bought Carlo’s Bakery. “He taught me everything I know,” said his son, who adored him. His dad died when Buddy was 17. He dropped out of school to run the family business.

“I believe that if you work hard, and you do what you have to do, you can accomplish anything,” he said emphatically. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m a high-school dropout. But I believe the American Dream is still alive.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes, I am,” he replied, “because I’m living it.”

Happily married and the father of four children, Buddy Valastro is many things: a workaholic, an ambitious entrepreneur, a romantic sentimentalist with a good heart, and an obsessive-compulsive (“I’m the type of guy who’ll see a crumb in a corner”). But family la famiglia means everything to him. When his 65-year-old mother was diagnosed with incurable A.L.S. (or Lou Gehrig’s disease), three years ago, he told her spontaneously on his TV show, “I will stop the world to come to you.”

Practically his entire family, it seems, works in Carlo’s Bakery. There are his four sisters Grace, Maddalena, Mary, and Lisa who hold various managerial positions, and his two brothers-in-law, Mauro Castano (pastry chef) and Joey Faugno (head baker). There’s cousin Frankie, who is in operations and logistics. “I got so many relatives working for me, it’s not even funny!” said Buddy, starting to laugh.

But I was to learn about another side of him that amounts to a touch of mad genius. When he first set out in the business, he explained, he needed his own “vision of cake.” Supermarkets were putting small bakeries like his out of business. “So I said, I got to make cakes they’ll never be able to make. And that’s when I went in the direction of making these crazy kind of cakes.”

His whimsical specialty cakes requested by his customers put him on the map. The cake artist within Buddy Valastro usually suggests the concepts. He has baked, for example, a life-size vintage-go-cart cake for a go-cart enthusiast, a cake with a real slot machine inside it for a Bar Mitzvah in Las Vegas, a giant chocolate tarantula cake for an entomologist, and a pink hearse cake for an undertaker with a sweet tooth.

“I mean this in the nicest possible way, Buddy,” I said. “You’re a nut job!”

“You got to be a nut!” he responded happily. Besides, he enjoys the challenge. “Look what I did last week,” he added, showing me a picture on his cell phone of an exact replica of a 16-foot alligator.

Its jaws even open and close. He baked it for an aquarium. “The whole thing is cake,” he said. “It’s pretty wild—right?”